St. Patrick’s Day Activities for Little Learners

Earlier this month I shared with you some fun DIY word family hats that are perfect for St. Patrick’s day. Today I’m back and sharing some read aloud ideas and fun classroom activities – St. Patrick’s Day activities for little learners!

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Read Alouds are one of my favorite times of the day. I usually do a real aloud after lunch and/or recess. Usually our read alouds correlate to a holiday, theme, or author we are studying…and sometimes, they are just for fun! As a classroom teacher it is so important that you make time to sit and read to your students. Kids love to be read to. There might be a child in your class that doesn’t ever get read to, so always make time to read…and read for fun! Pictured above are some of my favorite read alouds for St. Patrick’s day.

The other day I was at Party City and took a quick stroll down the St. Patrick’s day aisle. I couldn’t believe how much St. Patrick’s day stuff they had! A lot of it was perfect for the classroom! Normally I stock up on seasonal items in the Dollar Spot at Target. But I wasn’t having much luck finding St. Patrick’s day stuff. Thankfully Party City came to my rescue! The items were a little more than $1, but I thought the prices were still pretty good! Now my St. Patrick’s Day activities for little learners can be a total hit this March!

With the exemption of the small shiny coin in the bottom left corner which came from Hobby Lobby (40% off!!) the rest came from Party City. The stamps were $4, the black cauldrons were $4 (but they are SO hard to find..and I can pull them out again at Halloween!) and the rest of the items were between $2-$4.

I found these St. Patrick’s day erasers there too. They were $4, but you get 144 of them! There’s so many uses for them, but I thought they would be great to use for graphing!

We usually graph cereal, but I thought it would be fun to mix it up and graph erasers. I’m big on theme erasers so my kids always look forward to using them. It’s like Christmas when new erasers appear!

To prepare this activity, I put some erasers in a little cauldron (so sorry, that didn’t make it into the picture) and then we sort the erasers on a paper plate. I find it’s a good idea to give kids work space boundaries when there’s lots of little pieces involved. A paper plate works great for this! Students sort the pieces, graph their findings, and then use their graph to answer questions on the right.You can download a copy of this page by clicking on the picture below. Don’t have erasers to match? No worries, I included some cut apart pictures in the download that you can use instead! 🙂

This is a fun little partner game is similar to the winter version that I blogged about here. Students play with a partner or small group. They take turns spinning the spinner and placing that many manipulatives on their game board. The first person to reach 30 wins, Towards the end of the game, students need to spin the exact number on their game mat to finish the game. So if they have 28 and they spin a 2, they lose a turn. Same with the number 29, they need to spin a 1 in order to win the game!

I used gold coins to make a real and nonsense word sort. I took a Sharpie marker and wrote real and nonsense CVC words on the coins and put them in a cauldron. (Just a tip…go slow when you’re writing on the coins, the raised image on the coin was a little challenging to write over). The students read the word to determine if it is a real word or a nonsense word and then record it on their paper. This is such a cool center just because of the shiny coins and cauldron. You can cut yellow circles from construction paper, if you don’t have coins. Or use my affiliate link to grab some gold coins from Amazon.You can download the recording sheet by clicking on the picture below.

Here’s one to get your kiddos up and moving.

Who’s still practicing those CVC words? We practice and practice and practice some more. I made some shamrocks using the die-cut machine. (You could use foam shamrocks or these cutout shamrocks from Amazon too). To make this activity, program shamrocks with the CVC words to match the pictures on the paper. Students hunt the room looking for the shamrocks and then record the CVC word next to the matching picture.

Here’s some other festive activities. These are from the St. Patrick’s Day edition of my 6 Pack center series. I am loving this series because they have 3 literacy centers, 3 math centers, and 6 no-prep practice pages to reinforce the centers included in the pack. Each activity also includes teacher friendly directions and “I Can” visual direction pages for students.

Students color the shamrocks on their recording sheet to match the ones on the activity card. They count each color of shamrock and record how many of each color on their paper.

In the square marked with the shamrock, students record the number represented by the ten frame. They count to fill in the numbers that come before and after.

Students begin counting with the number on the pot of gold and use the coins to count on. They record the addition sentence on their paper. There’s two levels included, allowing you to differentiate. The easier level is pictured above.

Students identify the beginning digraph sound. They color the box to show the beginning digraph sound and then record the digraph on the line. You could have students record the entire word as well.

For this activity students say the names of the pictures on the card to determine the two pictures that rhyme. They record the two rhyming words on their paper.

Some short vowel practice here. Students sort the pictures by the middle vowel sound and then record the CVC words on the lines.

Also included in the 6 pack centers are six no-prep follow up practice pages. This way you have some resources to provide your kiddos with some extra practice. You could also use these for morning work, homework, or a sub tub. Here’s two samples of what those look like.

Students color the small circles on the spinner to create their own color code (this alone is a HUGE hit). They use a paperclip and a pencil to make a spinner. They spin the spinner and color a picture with the matching digraph sound using their personal color code.

Students cut apart the ten frame pictures and glue them in order from 11-20.